Love in the Time of Cholera (2007)

I had no expectations heading into this movie (it was just one of two films playing in English - ironically, it's set in Columbia). I found out afterwards that the author is the same as A Hundred Years of Solitude, a book people continue to recommend to me. I'm sure the book was much better.

We flow quietly and almost uneventfully from a youthful infatuation through obsession into old age as young love is extinguished on one side. The film is a 150 minute dissertation on the difference between working at an almost loveless relationship and unreasonable infatuation - and doesn't flatter either side.

The acting in this film is gentle and unforced. The characters are what the viewers don't buy. (Again, the book probably presents a more believable Florentino - a man who yearns his whole life for the woman he becomes infatuated with at a young age and hardly knows). The woman is placid. The antagonist, her husband, is mildly pompous. The protagonist, our lonely Florentino, is empty, bored, and ruined.

On the whole, despite honest efforts at beautiful scenery, great acting, sensational costumes and an exhilirating soundtrack, the film is based on an empty story - at least to me, in this moment.

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